Although much valuable work has been done on early Buddhist studies, some important gaps and misunderstandings remain. Here, I would like to discuss one of the main pioneers, the Wesleyan Methodist missionary to Ceylon, Benjamin Clough (1791–1853) (Figure 1), whose important role has not yet been recognised.Footnote 1 Clough published the first Pali grammar in a Western language in 1824, which inaugurated the study of Pali in the West.Footnote 2 His 1834 translation of a Kammavācā, a collection of Vinaya excerpts used in monastic rituals, was the first published translation of canonical Pali text into a Western language.Footnote 3 The second, Sinhala–English, volume of his Dictionary of the English and Singhalese and Singhalese and English Languages includes many Pali and Sanskrit words, and served as the main lexical resource for Pali and Buddhist Sanskrit until the publication of Robert Childers’s Pali dictionary between 1872 and 1875.Footnote 4 Apart from his own work, Clough established a focus on Pali and Buddhism within the Wesleyan Mission, which led it to become a veritable school of Buddhist studies; its several authors included Daniel J. Gogerly and Robert Spence Hardy, two of the most important nineteenth-century scholars.Footnote 5 Although Clough published less on Buddhism than he intended, his few short contributions laid the foundations for Gogerly and Hardy’s work, and provide important insight into the early field. Clough seems to have been neglected mainly because most of his publications were rare and difficult to access, and because some appeared in Methodist or other missionary publications that did not reach scholarly readers. Scholars also denied the significance of his Pali Grammar, wishing to claim that the Western study of Pali was inaugurated by Eugène Burnouf and Christian Lassen.
Benjamin Clough. Source: Collection of the Author.
Clough was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, in September 1791. His mother was an innkeeper and his father was a sergeant in the First West York Militia, who died when Clough was four years old. When he was 12 or 13, he attended weekly meetings for children held by John Crosse, the Vicar of Bradford, who had Methodist leanings and had been a friend of John Wesley. He was also influenced by his older brother, Isaac, a convert to Methodism who died of tuberculosis in 1809 and was regarded as a saintly figure.Footnote 6 Clough joined the movement at around the time of his brother’s death and began working as a local lay preacher while still in his teens. In 1811 or 1812, he was introduced to Thomas Coke, John Wesley’s main lieutenant and successor and twice president of the Methodist Conference. Accepting a position as Coke’s personal assistant, Clough travelled with him to Scotland and Ireland before being selected to accompany him on his mission to Ceylon. Although Coke died during the journey, Clough arrived at Galle on 29 June 1814, aged 22, the youngest of six original members of the Wesleyan Methodist Mission, now the Methodist Church of Sri Lanka. He had been Coke’s beloved favourite and occupied a place close to the centre of the movement throughout his life. When Clough’s first wife, Margaret, died in 1827, his friend, the scholar Adam Clarke, who had done early work on the Rosetta Stone and was three times president of the Methodist Conference, published a volume of her correspondence and personal writings.Footnote 7 Clough’s nephew, William Morley Punshon, who studied for the ministry with Clough in 1843 while living with him at his home in London, went on to become another president.Footnote 8 Clough was a true believer, zealously devoted to the saving of souls throughout his life. In an 1815 letter, he states that, when he would return home from travelling to preach three or four times a day, he would weep because of his physical inability to do more.Footnote 9 Punshon describes Coke as having been impressed when, at their first meeting, Clough said without hesitation that he was ready to leave everything behind and depart with him the following morning. He also writes that Clough was offered rapid promotion within the established Church if he left the Methodist movement or lucrative official posts if he left the ministry, but he ‘steadily refused’.Footnote 10
Initially posted at Galle, Clough moved to Colombo in 1815 and led the station there together with his close friend William Harvard. He stayed on after Harvard’s return to England in 1819 and continued to lead the station, and the Mission’s Southern District, for almost another two decades. He began studying Sinhala as soon as he arrived on the island, and Pali soon thereafter, and learned to speak Portuguese as well. The missionaries set up a press in Colombo, which gave them the power to publish their own writings; they had brought a printing press, type, and paper with them, and Harvard was a printer by trade. Gogerly was also a printer by trade and took over the press after his arrival in 1818. Clough reports that, by 1816, the station had three presses in operation; by 1822, it had five.Footnote 11
Clough began trying to learn about Buddhism as soon as he arrived on the island, initially taking an ethnographic approach, visiting temples, discussing Buddhist teachings with monks, and observing Buddhist rituals and festivals. In a letter from 1814, just a few months after his arrival, he reports that he had ‘cultivated an acquaintance with several of the priests of Budhu’ and ‘visited several of the temples, and […] been present, I think, at all their festivals of note’. In a letter from the following year, he writes:
Mr. Harvard and myself have been labouring the last six or eight months to find out, if possible, what the system [of Buddhism] is, and what the main pillars are that support it […]. We have spent much of our time in conversing, in a quiet way, with the most learned priests we could meet with.Footnote 12
Harvard comments: ‘Mr. Clough took every opportunity of being present at their religious services, and endeavoured on such occasions to engage the priests in conversations on religious topics.’Footnote 13 William Bridgnell gives an interesting account of a visit that Clough made with other missionaries, including Hardy, sometime in or after 1825, to the Kelanīya Vihāra, the most important temple in the Colombo area, and of a conversation he had with a monk there.Footnote 14
In 1817, Clough and Harvard used Mission funds to purchase the library of William Tolfrey, a civil servant who had taken up the study of Sinhala and Pali texts, after his unexpected death that year.Footnote 15 Clough made a catalogue of the collection, which included Buddhist manuscripts in both languages, mentioning there that he intended to translate a few stories from the Pansiyapanasjātakapota, a Sinhala translation of the Pali jātakas.Footnote 16 Although he never published any, Gogerly translated some from the Pali for his first article on Buddhism, published in 1838.Footnote 17 In an 1819 letter, Clough reports that he had begun translating ‘a very interesting book […] on the History and Religion of Budhu’ two years earlier, but had not had time to work on it.Footnote 18 This was probably the Sārasaṅgaha, an apparently twelfth- or thirteenth-century work that Clough had acquired as part of Tolfrey’s library and describes in his catalogue as dealing with ‘various subjects, in both Religion and History’.Footnote 19 In 1820, he described a broad programme of research for himself and the Mission, writing, with his colleague George Erskine, to Sir Robert Brownrigg, the departing governor:
Several of our Brethren have attained a competent knowledge of the native languages. […] We hope [that] the literature of the Island will ere long be considerably advanced by their publications, both of dictionaries and grammars of the language, as well also as of some translations of the native books […] which have never yet appeared in any European language.Footnote 20
Although Clough presents the study of Pali and Buddhism as being necessary to convert Buddhists to Christianity in his missionary letters and publications, he adopts a more liberal voice in the prefaces to his Grammar and Dictionary. He writes, for instance, that he decided to publish his Pali Grammar because of its importance to ‘the republic of letters’ and that he intended the Sinhala–English volume of his Dictionary in part to gratify the ‘curiosity of the learned world’. He justifies the study of Buddhism by suggesting that ‘it must appear an object of no ordinary importance to every philanthropist, to be in possession of all that constitutes a system commanding a religious influence over so many millions of our fellow men’.Footnote 21
The great Danish linguist Rasmus Rask visited Colombo for nine months between 1821 and 1822, and worked closely with Clough, who arranged lodgings and at least two Pali tutors for him, loaned him money, cared for him after a breakdown caused by overwork, and assisted him in acquiring the famous collection of Pali manuscripts that he brought with him back to Denmark.Footnote 22 Clough returned to England twice on furloughs, first from December 1822 until September 1825 and then from April 1832 until May 1833.Footnote 23 While on his first furlough, he inspected and provided a detailed written description of a manuscript of the Pansiyapanasjātakapota belonging to Sir Alexander Johnston, whom he had known while they were both in Ceylon, which Johnston later donated to the Royal Asiatic Society.Footnote 24 Probably through Johnston’s influence, Clough was elected a corresponding member of the Society in February 1833.Footnote 25 Clough donated a copy of his Pali Grammar to the Society in 1828 and a copy of his Dictionary in 1831.Footnote 26 Clough is also listed as a member of the Society’s Committee of the Oriental Translation Fund from its first meeting in 1829.Footnote 27 He published his Kammavācā translation in a volume of the Fund. A bout of malaria forced him to leave the island finally in 1837. After returning to England, he worked as a circuit preacher, stationed successively in Sheffield, London (Deptford), Maidstone, Leeds (Bramley), and Wakefield, moving to a new location every three years, following the Methodist practice of itinerancy.Footnote 28 He also took part in missionary fundraising. I have not found any evidence of his having continued his study of Pali or Buddhism during this time, except for his publication of a short article entitled ‘Buddhism’ in the Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine in 1840.Footnote 29 Although he suggests there that he would try to write more, he seems never to have done so. He retired in London (Southwark) in 1852 and died there the following year.
Clough’s most important work was his Compendious Pali Grammar, published with a date of 1824. Two different versions are known, one with a two-page ‘Advertisement’, in lieu of a preface, which was reprinted from a single-page prospectus issued in 1822; and the other with a seven-page original ‘Preface’ by Clough. The two versions are otherwise the same. As the preface is found in only a few known copies, I have included it in the Appendix. The work is in three parts, paginated separately. The first is the grammar proper, a reworked translation of the Bālāvatāra, a traditional introductory grammar for monastic students. The second is a list of Pali verbs taken from the Dhātumañjūsā and the third is a transcription of the body of the Abhidhānappadīpikā, a traditional thesaurus, with English equivalents. The work was begun by Tolfrey and completed by Clough. In the ‘Advertisement’, Clough describes Tolfrey as having ‘considerably advanced’ the translation, but this is likely modesty. George Turnour writes that, in his understanding, the work was ‘scarcely commenced’ at the time of Tolfrey’s death.Footnote 30 Though he is not acknowledged, Rask made some contribution to the first chapter, on pronunciation.Footnote 31
The publication of the Grammar took a rather complicated course. Clough issued the 1822 prospectus, mentioned above, on 3 March of that year, presenting a plan of the work and a call for subscribers, suggesting that 100 would be needed for the publication to move forward.Footnote 32 Rask sent a copy of this prospectus to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, where the secretary, Horace Hayman Wilson, announced it in a meeting the following month.Footnote 33 In a letter to Wilson, held by the British Library, dated four months later, Rask writes that he has enclosed a proof and asks Wilson to show it to [William] Adam, who he says subscribed for two copies, and to [William] Yates.Footnote 34 This can only have been the first part of the text, the grammar proper. In the ‘Preface’, which he wrote after his return from his first furlough in 1825, Clough states that he submitted the final two parts of the work to the printers just before his departure in December 1822 and that this prevented him from finishing them in the manner he had intended.Footnote 35 The printing was all but certainly superintended by Gogerly, who was in charge of the Colombo station during Clough’s absence.Footnote 36 Overall, the first part of the Grammar was printed prior to Clough’s departure at the end of 1822 and the other two parts sometime afterwards, likely in 1824, the date given on the volume’s title page. The ‘Advertisement’ was presumably also printed in Clough’s absence. After writing the ‘Preface’ following his return in 1825, Clough substituted it for the ‘Advertisement’ in some copies.
The Grammar’s distribution was also rather complicated. Before the full work was completed, Clough sent a copy of the first part, the grammar proper, to Rask, which Rask records have received in June 1823, soon after his return to Denmark. This is likely the item identified in the auction catalogue for Rask’s books as ‘Fragment of Cloughs Pali grammar’.Footnote 37 In their 1826 Essai sur le pali, Burnouf and Lassen note that the Asiatic Society of Bengal had received a copy of the Grammar and mistakenly state that its intended publication had not been carried out.Footnote 38 Léon Feer reports that Burnouf’s papers include a manuscript French translation of chapters 2–8 and a manuscript copy of the original English of chapters 9–10, with notation of the original pagination.Footnote 39 These chapters together comprise the complete grammar proper, suggesting the possibility that Burnouf and Lassen may have received a copy from either Wilson or Rask before they published the Essai. Direct inspection of Burnouf’s papers might be able to confirm or deny this. Clough sent a copy of the full Grammar to Calcutta in 1826 or 1827, where it received a brief, anonymous review in the Government Gazette, likely authored by Wilson.Footnote 40
The first mention of complete copies arriving in Europe seems to be an anonymous notice in the Journal Asiatique of October 1827, which states that some had arrived in England and that two had been sent on to France: Johnston sent a copy with the ‘Advertisement’ to Burnouf in August and, at around the same time, Thomas Pell Platt sent a copy with the ‘Preface’ and an inscription by Clough, dated Colombo, 4 August 1826, to [Jean-Daniel] Kieffer. The author of the notice is very jealous of Clough’s accomplishment, going so far as to claim that Burnouf and Lassen’s 1826 Essai should be considered to have priority in being ‘le premier ouvrage qui fasse connaître le pâli’, because it was published before the Grammar arrived in Europe.Footnote 41 Half a century later, J. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, who had been a student of Burnouf’s, similarly claimed that Burnouf and Lassen had a ‘relative priority’ that entitled them to be recognised as having inaugurated the study of Pali: ‘Nos illustres confrères, s’ils n’ont pas eu une priorité complète, ont au moins une priorité relative; et c’est leur rendre une impartiale justice que de dire que ce sont eux qui inauguré les études pâlies, que la grammaire de Clough, trop peu répandue, n’avait pas suscitées.’Footnote 42 Although the Essai was an impressive accomplishment, considering that Burnouf and Lassen wrote it on the basis of a just a few manuscripts that they were able to find in Paris, it is very basic. Most of the text is devoted to peripheral issues, such as Pali scripts and the nature and history of the language; it only has one chapter on grammar that does not give much information.Footnote 43 Its importance cannot reasonably be compared to that of the Grammar, which enabled Westerners to begin reading Pali texts. Further, even if we were to accept arrival in Europe as a criterion for priority, as we have seen, Rask had a printed copy of the main part of the Grammar in Denmark already in 1823.
Almost a century later, the tradition was continued by no less a scholar than J. W. de Jong, who, in his influential ‘Brief history of Buddhist studies in Europe and America’, goes rather further than either the author of the Journal Asiatique notice or Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire to claim—incorrectly—that the Essai was ‘the first Pāli grammar to be published in Europe’. He dismisses the Grammar’s importance on the old grounds that it ‘seems to have reached Europe only after a long delay’, citing an 1832 letter from August W. von Schlegel to Lassen that quotes Hermann Brockhaus as stating that only two copies had arrived in Europe by that time.Footnote 44 Other scholars have repeated de Jong’s claim. Philip Almond writes, for instance, that the Grammar ‘seems to have had a minimal impact on European Orientalists […]. More significant was Burnouf and Lassen’s Essai sur le Pali, the first Pali grammar to be published in Europe’.Footnote 45 Perhaps de Jong did not look closely enough at the Essai to recognise that it is not a grammar. Clough’s was both the first Pali grammar in a Western language and the first in Europe. It was in fact the only Pali grammar published in a Western language until the late 1860s.
Returning to the Grammar’s distribution, as mentioned above, Clough donated a copy to the Royal Asiatic Society in 1828, which was noticed in this journal the following year. A copy with the ‘Preface’, in my own collection, is inscribed by Clough to Mountstuart Elphinstone, ‘With the Authors Respects/ Wesleyan Mission House/ Colombo 30th Novr 1829’, apparently indicating that it was sent as a gift. In March 1833, Friedrich August Rosen sent two copies to Wilhelm von Humboldt from London, requesting that he pass one of them on to Franz Bopp.Footnote 46 In a published memoir, an anonymous medical doctor who sailed to Ceylon with Clough on his return from his second furlough in 1833 states that, when he arrived, Clough found that termites had ‘attacked a large number of copies of his “Pali Grammar,” and his other works, and totally ruined them for sale, or even use; he estimated his loss at nearly two hundred pounds sterling’.Footnote 47 In his 1837 review of George Turnour’s Maháwanso in Roman Characters, Hardy comments that European interest in Pali texts had been proven ‘by the number of copies that have recently been sold in London of the Pali Grammar published by Rev. B. Clough’.Footnote 48 When this sale took place is unclear; Clough may have brought some copies home on his second furlough, sent some or all of his unspoiled stock to London after his return to Ceylon in 1833, or both. Overall, Clough distributed the Grammar in a rather desultory manner over a period of about a decade. Only a handful of copies reached Europe before the 1830s, and not many seem to have arrived even then. Prior to the sale mentioned by Hardy, Clough seems to have handled the distribution personally, via direct mail from Colombo, to learned bodies, subscribers, others who paid in advance, and perhaps to some as personal gifts. The work probably also circulated in handwritten copies, such as the one possessed by Burnouf.
The Grammar was a Rosetta Stone that opened the study of Pali texts to the Western world. George Turnour states that it served as the basis for his own initial study of Pali and recommends it to others, commenting that ‘the close affinity of Páli to Sanscrit, together with the aid afforded by Mr. Clough’s translated Páli Grammar, in defining the points in which they differ, will enable any Sanscrit scholar to enter upon that interesting investigation with confidence’.Footnote 49 Burnouf made significant use of it, citing it several times in both his 1844 Introduction and 1852 Lotus de la bonne loi.Footnote 50 Feer suggests that Burnouf was using his French/English manuscript copy as the basis for a grammar of his own, which he never finished.Footnote 51 Burnouf also used the Grammar in his teaching. In the preface to the third edition of his translation of the Dhammapada, F. Max Müller writes:
I began [Pali] in 1845 during my stay at Paris with Burnouf, who was then almost the only scholar who could read Pâli texts, and I still have a letter of his in which he apologises for his imperfect knowledge of the language. At that time Pâli scholarship had not yet become a special and independent study, but it was a kind of annexe to Sanskrit. Men like Bopp and Burnouf were expected to teach not only Sanskrit and Comparative Philology, but at the same time, Zend, the Prâkrit dialects, and, as one of them, Pâli. Clough’s Pâli Grammar (Colombo, 1824 and 1832) and Turnour’s Mahâvanso (1837) were all that we had to depend on.Footnote 52
Max Müller’s reference to Clough 1832 must be a mistaken reference to the 1830 Sinhala–English volume of Clough’s Dictionary, which we will discuss presently. Viggo Fausböll cites the Grammar almost 30 times in his 1855 edition of the Dhammapada, based on three manuscripts that Rask brought to Denmark.Footnote 53 The preface to the important 1874 French translation of Ivan Minaev’s Pali grammar opens with the statement: ‘La seule grammaire pâlie qui existe, antérieurement à celle de M. Minayeff, nous voulons dire la grammaire de Clough, est depuis longtemps épuisée et aujourd’hui presque introuvable.’Footnote 54 In the preface to the second volume of his Pali dictionary, Childers comments that Clough’s Grammar ‘remained unsuperseded for more than thirty years’.Footnote 55
The Sinhala–English volume of his Dictionary, 852 pages in length, which includes many Pali words, was Clough’s other main contribution to Pali studies. Punshon thought it destined to be ‘the work by which [Clough’s] name will probably live the longest in the world of letters’.Footnote 56 Hardy describes its compilation:
All possible pains were taken. The most learned men in the island were consulted in all cases of difficulty; and when it is known that every word not colloquial had to be sought for separately, from the works in a literature of considerable extent, it will be seen that great patience and much labour were required in its compilation. The method adopted was this. The principal books in the language were taken, and every word in them was cut from the leaf, and arranged in a frame filled with little boxes, according to the initial letter, a, á, i, í, and so on. Then all the words beginning with a were taken, and arranged according to the letters in the first syllable, ang, aka, aká, aki, akí, aku, akú, following the order of the nágara alphabet. Some of the definitions that are given of words connected with the rites and doctrines of Buddhism [were] previously unknown in any western language.Footnote 57
Describing his work to the anonymous medical doctor he sailed with in 1833, Clough said that he sometimes spent days trying to find the correct meaning of a single word.Footnote 58 The printing and binding expenses were borne by the government, which then received 100 free copies.Footnote 59 In the dedication of the work, Clough thanked the governor, Sir Edward Barnes, for this sponsorship, which enabled him to publish the work without ‘the risk of personal loss’,Footnote 60 a loss that we have seen he actually suffered in publishing the Grammar. Though it received less discussion than the Grammar, and was also rare, it was an important scholarly resource. We have seen that Max Müller ‘depended’ on it and Burnouf himself cites it about 20 times in his Introduction and about 40 in his Lotus.
Given his early enthusiasm, the time and effort he put into its study, and his stated plans, Clough published less specifically on Buddhism than we would expect. Hopes were certainly high in some quarters. In 1823, the anonymous reviewer of Harvard’s Narrative of the Mission to Ceylon for the Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine, perhaps Adam Clarke, expressed the wish that Clough would soon provide an ‘exposition of the history, struggles, and forms of Budhuism, for which he has qualified himself beyond any other European, by his researches into Pali Literature’.Footnote 61 Indeed, no one at the time was better qualified for the task. In the end, though, Clough published just three small works: an article entitled ‘The Buddha’s vihara in Ceylon’ in an 1833 edited volume of missionary contributions;Footnote 62 his Kammavācā translation for the Oriental Translation Fund; and his article ‘Buddhism’ for the Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine. Along with these, Clough made a few comments in the prefaces to his Grammar and the second volume of his Dictionary, in letters published in the Methodist Magazine (later the Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine) and in an internal Methodist publication entitled Extracts from Quarterly Letters, &c., which was printed periodically in Colombo and sent to the missionary committee in London. While his letters in the Methodist Magazine and Extracts are now easy to access in digital form, the former never reached scholarly readers and the latter were not made available to the public.
Clough’s published letters provide an important window into his early work on Buddhism and the development of his perspective. In his 1814 letter to Clarke, mentioned above, Clough provides a description of a preaching ritual, which is important in apparently being the oldest account of two-pulpit preaching, a distinct style used at the time by Siyam Nikāya monks in which one monk would recite a Pali text and another would provide an explanation in Sinhala.Footnote 63 Clough also mentions an interesting practice in which laypeople would stand for hours with lamps on their heads as an offering of light. This practice is also mentioned by Harvard, but is apparently otherwise unattested.Footnote 64 Clough’s February 1816 letter to Buckley, also mentioned above, describes his frustration with his original, ethnographic approach and provides a rationale for the study of Buddhist texts:
The priests are extremely reluctant to bring their books of any importance to light, and it is very difficult to get them to answer any question in a direct way; indeed, the best of them will prevaricate, and avoid a fair statement, if he can, without being suspected of duplicity. And it is almost impossible to find two of them who will give the same answers to the same questions. And when we remind them of the difference, their general reply is, the books that we studied have it so: yet all contend for the same degree of veracity.Footnote 65
On the one hand, Clough felt that his conversations with Buddhists had reached a dead end and would not lead him to any clear understanding; on the other, the monks he spoke with told him that their beliefs were contained in their texts.
An 1825 letter illustrates one of the main approaches that Clough used in his conversion efforts, highlighting contradictions between Buddhist belief and science. Describing a private discussion he had with a Kandyan monk, he writes:
[The Buddha] represents the world as a vast plane. [‘]Now[’], said I, [‘]on this principle, if a ship leave a port, and for two years together continue to sail at such a rate in a direct westerly course, then at the end of that two years she must be so many thousand miles from the place she left.’ ‘Certainly,’ said he. ‘But now,’ said I, ‘our ships have often tried this; and at the end of two years, instead of finding themselves many thousand miles from the place they left, they have found themselves in the port from which they sailed.’ Having a globe before me, I now explained the matter, and he immediately apprehended it. ‘Besides,’ said I, ‘here is this quadrant, and this compass, by which instruments we find our way to every part of the world. And I can assure you, that Buddha has referred to oceans, to continents, to islands, and empires, and people, that never had an existence! Besides, said I, he pretends to have described the whole world.’ And here I handed him a list of all the places mentioned in their books, as well known by him; and showing him a map of the world, said, ‘This list of yours does not include one quarter of the world.’ By this time the Priest was in a pitiable state. His face […] turned pale; his lips quivered; and his whole frame was agitated. When he recovered he excused himself, and apologised for his agitation, and said, ‘Sir, I have heard with amazement these things. I see the truth of what you state on these points; but how are we situated in other respects?’ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘your astronomy, your history, and, in fact, the whole system of your theology, is precisely in the same state: It is all error!Footnote 66
Gogerly, Hardy, and Gogerly’s student David De Silva used this method as well, and it can be considered fundamental to the Wesleyan approach.Footnote 67 Clough remarkably shows no awareness that his own religious tradition faced the same problem, a vulnerability that Buddhists would exploit in their long series of controversies with the Wesleyans that culminated in the famous Panadura Debate of 1873, which De Silva is generally considered to have lost to the influential monk Migettuwatte Gunananda.Footnote 68 The letter also represents a poignant snapshot of Buddhists’ initial encounter with modernity, providing a reminder that traditional geography, cosmology, and mythical history were central to pre-modern South Asian Buddhist belief, with modern forms of Buddhism retaining only a fraction of the tradition’s former territory.
Moving to Clough’s formal publications, his preface to the second volume of his Dictionary, from 1830, presents a remarkable vision and justification for the study of Buddhism as a field in its own right:
The favourable position of Ceylon […] and the facilities which its learned languages afford for the investigation of the buddhist system, ought to be taken into consideration. Whether the developement of buddhism be likely to yield an interest commensurate with the difficulties and labour of unfolding it to the world, is not the question now to be answered. It must appear an object of no ordinary importance to every philanthropist, to be in possession of all that constitutes a system commanding a religious influence over so many millions of our fellow men. But the enquiries to be instituted in the investigation of buddhism lead to subjects so intricate and obscure that no author ought to venture upon the enterprize who is unable to consult original authorities in their own languages. This remark may appear gratuitous in the preface to a dictionary, yet the sentiment is fully borne out if we look at the errors into which many respectable writers have fallen in attempting to describe the buddhist system. Translations of native works of acknowledged authority, if executed with fidelity, will open the way for obtaining information, and remove many of the obstacles which at present impede the progress of research. […] A knowledge of the languages in which the system is recorded becomes indispensable; and any work at all calculated to facilitate their acquirement claims the patronage and encouragement of every one interested in oriental researches.Footnote 69
A few things are noteworthy here. First, at a time when other scholars were reading Buddhist texts mainly for information on Indian history, Clough stands out in emphasising the importance of understanding Buddhist thought. He shows a clear understanding of the complexity of the matter and an awareness that significant effort would be required over an extended period of time. Especially salient is Clough’s insistence that the effort should focus on Buddhist texts in their original languages. Of course, this did turn out to be the field’s primary focus, a fact that has inspired some significant, if somewhat confused, discussion in more recent scholarship.Footnote 70 Although Clough is clearly writing in his liberal, academic persona here, he does an admirable job of justifying the study of Buddhism as being important to the broad understanding of humanity.Footnote 71
In his 1833 ‘Buddha’s vihara in Ceylon’, Clough discusses the nature and format of Buddhist temples and provides some basic comments on Buddhism that were significantly ahead of their time. His discussion focuses on a woodblock print of an unspecified vihāra, which we can identify as Yatagala Rāja Mahāvihāraya, an ancient, still active temple near Galle. Clough gives an early characterisation of the Buddha as an ancient philosopher and indirectly presents the idea of five skandhas, coming very near to providing the first published, scholarly account of the Buddhist teaching of anātman, or ‘no-self’:
Gautama Buddha, the originator of this great system of faith, was the founder of a school of philosophy in one of the Gangetic provinces, several centuries previous to the Christian era […]. His philosophy embraces many doctrines which bear a striking resemblance to those of the oldest Grecian philosophers, and particularly in their doctrine of atoms. With him matter is eternal, consisting of five primitive elements, out of which spring all that variety of objects existing both in the visible and invisible worlds.Footnote 72
Along with his general presentation, Clough makes an interesting mention in a note of a Buddhist temple building that had been transported to England and was being exhibited in London.Footnote 73
Clough’s 1840 ‘Buddhism’ was one of the best publications on Buddhism published to that date, though it seems to have been completely overlooked. I have not yet been able to locate a single publication, contemporary or recent, that mentions it. He discusses the contents of some suttas and atthakathās, and mentions that he had made translations of several suttas, which turned out to be too long to include. Although George Turnour had presented outlines of the Pali canon already in 1837, Clough includes one of his own that was clearly prepared independently, showing a good general familiarity with its divisions and contents.Footnote 74 Like Wilson, H. T. Colebrooke, early Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat, and late Hardy, Clough presents the Buddha’s historicity as uncertain, referring to him as ‘the reputed author of the system’ and qualifying a comment about him with the condition ‘if such a person did ever exist’.Footnote 75 It is unfortunate that Clough did not write more, and it is difficult to do more than speculate on his reasons for not doing so.
When attempting to locate Clough in the birth of Buddhist studies, it is important to first say that the common claim that the field was founded by Burnouf is not very helpful. While his Introduction and Lotus were certainly the grandest works of the early period, Burnouf did not actually found anything. It is in fact difficult to identify any major discovery or important perspective that can properly be credited to him.Footnote 76 Donald Lopez gives Burnouf credit for four specific moves—‘Indianization’, ‘Sanskritization’, ‘Textualization’, and ‘Humanization’—but, without going into specific details, all of these had been made by previous scholars and, substituting Palicisation for Sanskritisation, we find all four combined already in the work of Clough.Footnote 77 Rather than originating with a single publication or heroic figure, the field emerged in an extended process involving contributions from several scholars. The process was set in motion by the foundation of the great Asiatic societies, most importantly those of Calcutta, Paris, and London, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which provided the institutional basis for organised, collegial study. The first works to present themselves as part of a progressive, international effort to make sense of Buddhism were published under the auspices of these societies, or in close communication with them, in the 1820s. The most important scholars in the very beginning were Wilson, Rémusat, and Clough, with Burnouf joining them in the second half of the decade. To a significant extent, these can be regarded as the first works of what we now call Buddhist studies.
An important factor was the relative dating of the main categories of primary texts, a difficult problem that was not resolved until the 1870s. Although scholars had several pieces of the puzzle, until this dating was in place, they were largely groping in the dark. With Burnouf, it is important to keep in mind that he always thought that his Nepalese Sanskrit manuscripts preserved the oldest surviving texts and that this threw off his whole understanding. Once scholars determined that Pali suttas were much older, Burnouf’s views became largely obsolete and few scholars cited his work. Another key factor was the emergence of Buddhist studies as a field of its own, which involved an even longer process that stretched into the second half of the twentieth century. Until then, most leading scholars studied Buddhism as an aspect of Indology, Sinology, or the broader study of Asia. The first scholar to envision and advocate the study of Buddhism as a distinct field, however, was Clough, in the preface to the second volume of his Dictionary, discussed above. Of all the things that might have interested them on the island, not only Clough, but all the Wesleyans published only on Buddhism. After the time of Gogerly and Hardy, this exclusive focus was maintained by T. W. Rhys Davids, whose Pali Text Society succeeded the Wesleyan Mission as the primary institution for Western Pali studies.
Significantly more work will be needed before we will have a clear sense of the main figures and developments involved in the emergence of Buddhist studies. The most important periods requiring additional study, I would suggest, are the 1820s and the 1850s to 1880s. Although major scholars from the 1830s, especially Turnour, Alexander Csoma de Kőrös, Rémusat, and Isaac Jacob Schmidt, have been recognised as playing significant roles, typically envisioned as paving the way for Burnouf’s Introduction, the international, academic study of Buddhism actually emerged in the 1820s, a period that scholars have scarcely touched. The work of this period has been overlooked largely because much of it is very rare or, in the case of most of Wilson’s work, which I will discuss elsewhere, was published anonymously. Much of the rare material from this period has been digitised in recent years, enabling scholars to access it without needing to travel, but much is still only available on crumbling pages in scattered archives. This is especially true of scholars’ letters, which generally have not received careful study.Footnote 78 The period from the 1850s to the 1880s is important because most of the basic understanding of Indian Buddhism and its history current today was established during this time, the main scholars being Wilson (still!), Gogerly, Hardy, Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, Max Müller, Karl Friedrich Köppen, V. P. Vasil’ev, Émile Senart, I. P. Minaev, Rhys Davids, Hermann Oldenberg, and Hendrik Kern. The now central idea that early Buddhism focused on the practice of meditation and the attainment of a special religious or mystical experience, however, did not emerge until the 1920s and 1930s, when it was introduced by D. T. Suzuki.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the University of Manitoba’s University Research Grants programme and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for providing financial support for this project. I would also like to thank Elizabeth Harris for helping me to arrange a visit to the archive of the Methodist Church of Sri Lanka; Anusha De Silva and everyone else there for their kind welcome and assistance; Nancy Charley, at the Royal Asiatic Society, for valuable help; and my friend, Jonathan Walters, for reading a typescript and providing valuable comments.
Appendix: ‘Preface’ included in some copies of Clough’s Grammar
<i.> The Pali and the Sanskrit languages being so nearly allied to each other, it is much to be regretted that the former should have remained so long an almost unexplored region. Interesting discoveries have been made, of late years, in Oriental literature, through the medium of Sanskrit; yet the Pali, although possessed of every claim to investigation, has been greatly neglected by Europeans. In the few introductory remarks which the Editor intends here to make, he will refrain, as much as possible, from adverting to points that might lead to a discussion on the relative claims which these two very ancient languages have upon the attention of Oriental scholars of the present day. The Sanskrit is the most ancient and extensive depository of the History, Theology, Jurisprudence, and Science in general, of the Brahmins; the Pali is the same of the Buddhists. The Brahmins conceive the Sanskrit to be the most ancient language in the world; but the Buddhists, with equal warmth, and some show of reason, contend that the Pali is entitled to the precedence.
The arguments advanced by both parties, turn chiefly upon religious notions, in which they are ever at issue, and we might as well attempt to reconcile the principles of the two great systems of heathenism to each other, as hope to prevail on their adherents to think alike on this subject.—This point, therefore, must be determined by Europeans, when they are in possession of the requisite evidence. Judging from the striking similarity that exists between them in every essential part, one would be disposed to conclude that the Sanskrit and Pali languages had a common origin, or that the one is derived from the other, and that they were vernacular in countries contiguous, and in ages not very remote from each other.
If the developement of each, in modern days, had been carried on with equal ardour and success, it would, most certainly, have extended and perfected discoveries of the first importance to Oriental literature. For it ought long ago to have been more extensively known among men of <ii.> Asiatic research, that among the numerous volumes existing in the Pali language, are many by different authors, with different titles, which narrate many of the same events as are found in Sanskrit. Here we have the same Dynasties of Kings and Emperors;—the rise, progress, and overthrow, of the same Empires—accounts of the same wars and contentions, both civil and religious. It must, therefore, be apparent, that could the two languages have been brought into the full view of Europeans, by the same progressive efforts, their concurrent testimony on the subjects already mentioned, would have afforded Oriental writers additional certainty in their researches: and, in all probability, would have removed much of that obscurity and doubtfulness which is observable in almost every page of modern Asiatic research.
In some cases indeed, the testimony of Oriental writings is not satisfactory evidence of the facts upon which it bears, as the coalition might arise from design or intrigue: but no such objection presents itself to the union of evidence which we find in the Sanskrit and Pali writings, for the Books found in one language have been written by Brahmins, and the others by Buddhists, between whom there could not in any period of the world have existed any such amity as would be necessary to unite in framing such a series of systematic records.
Their religious views and practices being opposite to each other, they lived in a state of constant hostility, which ended in the most sanguinary conflicts. And when the balance of power preponderated in favour of the Brahmins, the Buddhists became an oppressed and persecuted people, and finally, they and their religion were expelled from the country which had been the birth-place of both. From this period must be dated the decline of the Pali language and literature; an event which took place anterior to the Christian era.
A full examination of this subject is a desideratum in Asiatic research, and greatly merits the attention of some able Orientalist; but any attempt of the kind would here be out of place. This ground is yet so little trodden, that it was intended, in the first instance, that the present work should go abroad without any lengthened remarks being prefixed, but it being the first work of the kind ever published, and one likely to fall into the hands of persons who have had but few opportunities of collecting information of some of the peculiar facts connected with the language it is designed <iii.> to illustrate, it is now thought that a few observations are indispensable.
And first of the name. The names of several of the principal languages of India are epithets expressive of some particular qualities of the language they designate. The word Pali is from පැල pela, a Row, a word which when used in such a place, is designed to express the perfection of its grammatical construction. But the name which it most generally bears in the records of the language is මගධය Magadha, which it takes from the country so called, where it was originally spoken.
Mr. Colebrooke, in his learned Essay on the Sanskrit and Prákrit languages, in the Asiatic Researches, Vol. 6, makes out the Magadha to mean among Indian authors, “a rude uncultivated language; a dialect of the vulgar, and the lowest castes of natives.” How so learned and respectable a writer on Indian literature could have fallen into such an error, I know not, except by the probability that he suffered his mind to be biassed by the sentiments of the Brahminical Pundits, who hold the Buddhists in abhorrence, and their language in contempt. For, waiving various other arguments that might be advanced, it might be fairly presumed, that the Grammar here presented to the world of the real මගධභාෂාව Magadha bhasava is quite sufficient to refute such a charge. Mr. Colebrooke’s Magadha bhasava, must therefore mean some rude dialect of the old language, which became vernacular in the country subsequent to the period already referred to, when the religion and language of Buddha were driven out of Magadha by the persecuting Brahmins.
Of the country where Pali became vernacular. This is a subject of enquiry which has already been partly anticipated. The natives designate it sometimes මධ්යදේසය Madhyadaysaya, which among them, means India proper, or India within the Ganges. There is scarcely any end to their historical accounts of this country, which is rendered so sacred to them on account of its being the birth-place of their Deity, the great scene of his labours, and especially the place where he delivered vivâ voce, the Banna, their Sacred writings, all of which are found in the Pali language. Col. Wilford’s account of this country given in the A. R. Vol. 9, agrees very well with the native account of it. “By Magadha proper, South Bahar is understood, but in a more extensive sense, it includes all the Gangetic provinces, and is by far the richest <iv.> and best part of the British Empire in Asia. It is also famous for having given birth to Budha, and being, as it were, the cradle of the religion of one of the most powerful and extensive sects in the world.” And that it must have been a place of great sanctity at some period, even its present name testifies, South Bahar, which it has from විහාර Vihara, a temple. At the present period, Pali has not only ceased to be the vernacular language of Magadha, but of every other country. But in the temples of Budha, whose priests continue to study it with unabated interest, it is often the medium of intercourse, particularly in the discussion of sacred subjects: and on the festival days, their public lectures are generally given in Pali, and afterward interpreted into Singhalese by one of the officiating priests.
One of the chief arguments advanced by the Buddhists in proof of the antiquity of Pali, is the antiquity of their Religion. They by no means admit that Goutama, the son of Sododana, whose era is well ascertained in Indian Chronology, was the founder of their Religion, but that in the lapse of ages, he was one of its great devotees, and one who living according to all the laws of that system, attained the rank of Buddha. They mention also, that the principles of Buddhism are coeval with time, or the existence of man, and that the other systems of Religion found in India are schisms, or rather corruptions, of the primitive Religion. Before this point can be conceded to them, we must set both Revelation and reason aside. Buddhism is perfect atheism; and its advocates maintain that the belief in the existence of gods, and the practices of paying them divine homage, are modern corruptions of the first religious principles of mankind. Such ideas are opposed by the reason, common-sense, and practice, of all the nations of the world besides. Therefore, if the antiquity of Pali be solely founded on such a sentiment, it will have no support.
It is true, the Magadha Emperors, from whom Buddha is descended, were for many centuries Lords paramount of India, and that while such was the case, the Pali was, no doubt, cultivated in a high degree; yet we have no Records in the Language worthy of notice anterior to the Days of Goutama Buddha, whom I conceive to have been the great moral Philosopher of his day. In the most ancient languages we have deposits of literature, which were, doubtless, the earliest efforts of mankind. Hence in Sanskrit are found Books on <v.> astronomy, astrology, witchcraft, and necromancy, in all its variations. But in the ancient Pali there are found no works of this description nor any reference to the subjects, any further than that such were in existence at the times in which the authors in that language lived and wrote. Another peculiarity observable in most of the ancient languages is, that they are in general exceedingly artificial and complex in their grammatical construction, abounding in a great variety of inflexions and terminations. But as languages are in no small degree affected by the changes and vicissitudes of the nation in which they are at first vernacular, they become in the lapse of time less artificial, and substitute in the place of their original inflections and terminations various auxiliaries and particles, by the adoption and use of which the language is both spoken and written with less efforts of mind than before. And this is peculiarly the case when the language, or a very proximate dialect of it, is, by invasion or conquest, transferred to another people. This fact is so clearly established, in European history especially, that it is unnecessary to produce instances. If therefore we apply this rule of judging to the question in consideration, we have a criterion by which we may judge of the antiquity of Pali. Every essential of this language is found in Sanskrit. The Vocabularies of its nouns and of its verbal roots are nearly the same: the one of nouns which is appended to this Grammar is a copy, with slight alterations, of the Amera Cosha, published by Colebrook, and the list of verbal roots is nearly the same, but differently classified, as the one published by the same author from Sanskrit. The Grammars also of the Pali are formed on nearly the same model as those of the Sanskrit, but with this difference, they are much more simple, and not burthened with that load of inflexions and anomalies which are so appalling to the Sanskrit student, and bear the most undoubted marks of being much more modern. The conclusion therefore is to my mind irresistible, that Pali is not what may be termed a primitive, i.e. one of the ancient languages which at the confusion at Babel divided the families of the earth, but that it is a derived language, and one of the most ancient and perfect scions of the Sanskrit. It still remains to be determined when it became a distinct and vernacular language in the nation where it was first found.
<vi.> Of the character in which Pali was originally written, little can be said with certainty, and it has often been a matter of surprise to me that the learned in Ceylon who have studied the language almost as their native tongue, should not be able to give any account whatever of its alphabet. It has been suggested, especially by Dr. F. Buchanan, that the square character found in the Burman empire, in which many of their books are written, is the original character of the Pali language. Several eminent Priests have gone from Ceylon to Ava, and have resided there for years, and on their return have brought large collections of books in this character. I have examined with much care, and with the assistance of the Priests, several specimens of them, to try and ascertain this fact; but the custom which prevails among the Burmese of lackering or enamelling the books in this character, instead of writing or rather engraving them with the style, tends to give a great indistinctness to many of the letters, and renders it not so easy to decypher them. Yet it is quite clear in my apprehension that the alphabet was formed upon that ancient model, the devánágari, as are many of the Indian alphabets, both within and beyond the Ganges. But not having been able to procure a copy of the alphabet, and being under the necessity of forming my opinion upon it as I find it in written order, I cannot speak with that certainty I should wish: however I find there are in this alphabet 9 characters less than are in the devánágari alphabet, viz. 5 vowels and 4 consonants; also several of the symbols which in Sanskrit are substituted for certain mute consonants for the convenience of writing, such as the upper and lower signs for the r, which sounds never occur in Pali, although the word may be directly derived from Sanskrit. In the latter we write purwah, in the former pubbo; chandrah, chando. Granting, however, that this alphabet is what it is now conjectured to be, yet it is remarkable that no vestiges of it were to be found in Ceylon previous to the introduction of the books already referred to, from the Burman empire. For it is the decided sentiments of the Priests and the learned of both countries, that both the religion of Buddha and the Pali language were carried from hence to Burma. But it is time and patient research that must determine both this and <vii.> other matters of importance that yet remain unsettled with respect to the history of the Pali language. I must however just say that “the native of Taway,” mentioned by Dr. F. Buchanan, A. R. vol. 6 page 306, greatly misled that Gentleman, when he told him there was a great difference between the Pali of Ceylon and that of the Burman empire. It is the uniform declaration of those Singhalese Priests who have resided in that empire for years, and at Ava the seat of learning and general information, that there is no difference whatever; and in the very limited opportunities which I have had of collating Burman and Singhalese Pali books I find them exactly the same, with the only exception of a few literal differences which have originated with the copier. So that a Burma Pali book, either in the square or common character read in Ceylon, will be perfectly intelligible to the Singhalese Pali scholar.
The latter part of this work went to Press, I am sorry to say, under considerable disadvantages. On account of the ill state of my health, I was forced to quit Ceylon for a time, nor could I previous to my leaving the country give that finish to the manuscript I could have wished. The Dahtoo Manjusa, or list of Verbal Roots, although completed, is not classified in the manner I first intended it should be. And it was my intention also, to have enlarged the various meanings of the negahandua, or vocabulary, much beyond what they now are. However, the work was only given in the hope that it would lead to the publication of a more copious and perfect work by some one who has more leisure, and greater facilities at command than have ever fallen to my lot.
It has already appeared in the Prospectus, that was given to the public, how far the late W. Tolfrey, Esq. H. M. C. S. in this Island carried this work. Both the Grammar and the Vocabulary were brought into a state of great forwardness by him, but I never could collect from any of his memorandums that he contemplated publishing them. When his mass fell into my hands, I thought that such documents were of too great importance to the republic of letters to suffer them to be lost. Hoping they would be found of some utility, I resolved on publishing them, with the result also of my own efforts at their completion, at the same time shall refrain from any further apology on the Subject.
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